The connection between subject and color in the Ashura tiles of ” Tekiye Moaven Al-Molk” in Kermanshah

Tekyeh Moaven al-Molk of Kermanshah is one of the well-known religious buildings of the Qajar period in the city of Kermanshah which was built and completed by the deputy of Moaven al-Molk, the founder, in 1320 AH. At first, this building only included the Hosseiniyah sections and its main use was to hold religious ceremonies as a place to resolve ethnic nomadic and social differences.
This beautiful and magnificent building of the Qajar period, has a variety of tiles of Quranic stories, paintings in European naturalism, paintings of Iranian Kings, Islamic motifs as well as Ashura themes, and is Known as a treasure trove of rich images and color diversity in the art of tiling in Iran.
One of the most widely used themes in religious paintings is tiles with Ashura themes. Accordingly, it is expected that in accordance with this type of drawing, certain colors would be appropriated to the function and overall space of the Tekyeh.
Therefore, with the aim of explaining the impact of the events of the great Karbala plain on the choice of color of Ashura tiles in this building, an attempt has been made to answer the questions of what visual and conceptual relationship exists between the choice of colors in Ashura tiles of the Tekyeh Moaven al-Molk of Kermanshah and the theme of the pictures?
And that in choosing the color for the tiles, the subject of the tiles had the main priority or the choice of color was made according to the originality of the color palette of the Qajar period and the execution methods of the time?
The answers to these questions make clear the necessity and importance of the present study.
The target population of this research is to examine all the Ashura tiles in the Tekyeh Moaven al-Molk, which have been selected from their main part of the Tekyeh, namely Zeinabia. In this part of the Tekyeh, there were twelve tiles with Ashura theme, two of which had collapsed and physically damaged over time. In the end, due to few shortcomings, seven tiles were studied as statistical population.
Due to the fact that each tile is composed of a large number of identical units of 20×20 cm tiles with seven- color tile technique, by dividing each work into parts of these unites, extensible results can be extracted for all Ashura tiles.
Therefore, based on the available sampling method, the statistical population of seven Ashura tiles with 834 unit out of a total of 1256 units has been selected, which are firstly completely intact, and secondly have quality in terms of color. In this research, with the technique of image processing science, the amount of color used in each tile has been explained as well as the relationship between color and subject in Ashura tiles of Tekyeh Moaven al-Molk.
This research is a type of developmental one and from the perspective of data type; the research method is qualitative and qualitative, which has been done by examining all the tiles of Ashura drawing available in the Zeinabia section of the Tekyeh.
The data generation tools in this research are observation, field research and image preparation of the environment. Background information was gathered through written and printed sources, and interviews with knowledgeable individuals helped generate more data in this area.
The method of analysis was as follows: After color analysis of seven tiles in MATLAB software and obtaining the percentage of color used in each, colors with a rate of 1% in the frequency range and bar charts of each image were included. Then, the average of the highest and lowest percentages of colors was extracted from the widely used colors in these tiles.
By extracting quantitative data obtained from the amount of color used in these tiles according to the statistical results obtained with the help of image processing science, it was concluded that the choice of color in Ashura tiles of Tekyeh Moaven al-Molk was influenced by the dominant colors used in the Qajar period. But the highest percentage of colors used in Ashura tiles are from the family of Gray colors, which were chosen because of the main function of the Tekyeh as a place of mourning for Aba Abdullah.
Therefore, the choice of colors used in Ashura tiles, in addition to maintaining the continuity of the color tradition of Qajar tiles, has a direct relationship with the themes and concepts of Ashura tiles of Tekyeh Moaven al-Molk.